Please Take A Look If You Have A Few Minutes :)

[Becki]

Hi all,

 

Please take a look at let me know what you think. The website is here Craft Me Happy.

 

It is live so please don't buy anything if you don't want it!

 

Before the 'this is standard looking osc' comments start the basic layout is how people wanted it! Lots of contributions have been added and things streamlined so I hope it is now an easy to use straight forward attractive/professional looking site that does everything it needs to.

 

It was launched 4ish weeks ago, we've had orders but not as many as expected - is there anything obvious that we're all missing?!

 

I'd just like to say thanks to all the people on the forums who have helped me put all this together, Thank You.

 

If there is an issue please give any advice that you have, thanks.

 

Becki

 

Known Issues:

 

Protx credit card errors don't show due to incorrect integration with STS - working on...still!

Popup images in one Linux or Mac based internet broswer don't resize correctly.

Front page will be made more attractive soon!

[Guest]

I like the color scheme. I noticed a lot that can be improved visually on the front page, you mentioned that you where working on it. So I will leave that alone. The only thing I noticed was the minimum purchase requirement. Are you positive that it is inline with your target market's average sales figures? I would imagine that it could put some potential customers off.

[richieboy29]

change the bright purple to somthing lighter. bright colours often put people off. I would recomend light blue or somthing to that extend as it is pleasing on the eye.

[♥14steve14]

Sort your address order in your create account page.

[Becki]

@ yalisma

Thanks, front page still isn't ideal but added a photo now to make it look better as a quick fix - how do you think it could be improved further?. The minimum order amount is a valid point and one we will discuss.

 

@ richieboy29

Looking at it now it is very bright your right! I like the fact the colours are bright etc as they should be for this type of site - but i will look into other colours and see if we can make an improvement.

 

@14steve14

I don't know why I had done it like that! I presume you meant the fact county was below the postcode - now fixed.

 

Thanks for your time and if you have any more comments don't be shy! :)

 

What were load times like for you?

 

I'm thinking of ways to make it more obvious to click on a sub cat. Several people have said they didn't know the sub cats were there - they thought there were just a few items in the category and then the products in the new products box. Other than descriptive text has anyone got any ideas?

 

Thanks

 

Becki

[Guest]

@ yalisma

Thanks, front page still isn't ideal but added a photo now to make it look better as a quick fix - how do you think it could be improved further?. The minimum order amount is a valid point and one we will discuss.

 

 

Becki-

 

I am not fond of the beveled boxes. They look out of place and "schoolish". The rest of your site looks pretty good, and I do like the colors. The tones match, you stick with three throughout the site, and they are evenly distributed along every page. I think if you flatten the beveled boxes, and change their design a little bit, it will go a long way to bringing out the care and energy put into this site.

 

On the subcat's issue. It looked fairly straight forward to me. Although your new products box did take up the majority of the screen, so that might be misleading people. We put a link to new products in our left nav in order to focus the attention on our subcategories. But that might not work for your store. Take a look at our page if you want to see what I am talking about. I do not want Google to register our address on this page, so check out my profile to get to the page. Again, our tactic only works if you have enough subcategories to populate the screen.

 

p.s. I like the favicon as well, its like a happy little ghost watching me. Kinda freaky now that I think about it. But I still like her.

[Becki]

Haha, yes your right about the favicon!

 

I'll try changing the bevel boxes tonight and see how they look, I could make them alot better using images but don't want to increase the load time so will try just changing them first.

 

Thanks

 

Becki

[Jaide]

I like the color scheme and favicon, cute!

 

"NEW IN!! STARFORM STITCHING PEEL OFFS!"

 

Is that supposed to be "Now In"?

[Becki]

I like the color scheme and favicon, cute!

 

"NEW IN!! STARFORM STITCHING PEEL OFFS!"

 

Is that supposed to be "Now In"?

 

 

Hi,

I haven't populated the site so not sure! But I think it's just preference really.

 

Thanks

Becki

[Becki]

Becki-

 

I am not fond of the beveled boxes. They look out of place and "schoolish". The rest of your site looks pretty good, and I do like the colors. The tones match, you stick with three throughout the site, and they are evenly distributed along every page. I think if you flatten the beveled boxes, and change their design a little bit, it will go a long way to bringing out the care and energy put into this site.

 

On the subcat's issue. It looked fairly straight forward to me. Although your new products box did take up the majority of the screen, so that might be misleading people. We put a link to new products in our left nav in order to focus the attention on our subcategories. But that might not work for your store. Take a look at our page if you want to see what I am talking about. I do not want Google to register our address on this page, so check out my profile to get to the page. Again, our tactic only works if you have enough subcategories to populate the screen.

 

p.s. I like the favicon as well, its like a happy little ghost watching me. Kinda freaky now that I think about it. But I still like her.

 

 

Yalisma,

 

Which browser did you use to look at the site? I've just realised that in FF and mozilla etc the boxes really do look beveled and really poor to be honest! I thought they looked OK in IE. They are not supposed to look beveled which I don't think they do in IE.

 

Is there a simple fix for this or will they always show as beveled boxes in FF etc?

 

And the top navigation bar text in Epiphany is tiny...grrrr. Plus the popup image doesn't size correclty for Konqueror but I'm sure I'd used a version of image_popup to fix that....

 

Thanks

Becki

[Philth]

Becki - nice site, similar concept to the Handmade Greetings card site I'm building at the moment.

 

What contrib did you use to get that Ctegory menu in the left hand side?

 

Thanks

 

 

Phil

[PD_Steve]

If you want to boost your google rank, think about how you have worded the title of your index page. I have found that the index page title is more powerful at getting good google ranks than the keywords (seriously). Although its nice to use it for your company slogan, your better off adding product names and keywords into the title tag to get that extra kick.

 

You will always notice that several of the links above you on each google search have the name of the product your searched on in the title area. I know that header tags does this automatically for the product pages, but the index page is generally where your google page rank will be highest and therefore more likely to score higher overall.

 

I have made sites move from unranked to page one on google just with the title tag tweak. If your looking for sales, then you need visitors to do it :)

 

Nice site also

[Becki]

If you want to boost your google rank, think about how you have worded the title of your index page. I have found that the index page title is more powerful at getting good google ranks than the keywords (seriously). Although its nice to use it for your company slogan, your better off adding product names and keywords into the title tag to get that extra kick.

 

Thanks for the advice, I will give it a go, i suppose as it is there are no words describing the actual content of the shop. Thanks

 

@Philth

I think its just part of the BDP

 

Were laod times etc ok for you?

 

I'm thinking of installing a image cache contribution rather than just the thumbnailer. But as there are few visitors there's no need at the moment!

 

 

Becki